Piers says when he set out on his mission to get Oprah to agree to be his first guest, he knew exactly where to start: Gayle. "If you want to get an interview with Oprah, here's what you do. You remember that film, You've Got Mail? It's a bit like that," Piers says. "I'd write, 'Dear Gayle: You don't know me, but I really need to make you like me.'"

The day after her interview with Piers, Oprah told a reporter about her experience. "She said, 'That was one of the toughest interviews I've done,'" Piers says. "And then she said, 'I had to go home, I had to have a hot bath and two Anacin.'"

Oprah says she was surprised by how expertly Piers steered the interview to the topics he wanted to talk about, including politics and Oprah's love life. "I will tell you, I went in the interview with my own things to talk about. I went in and I was going to talk about [the Oprah Winfrey Network], I was going to talk about ending the show and I was going to talk about Australia," Oprah says. "I ended up talking about none of that!"